My name is Ruth Dawson. I’m seventy‑three years old. I live alone in a one‑story stucco house in a quiet gated community in Naples, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, where the palm trees wear Christmas lights in December and snow only ever appears in the window displays at Target.
The house smelled like roasted turkey and cinnamon candles that Christmas Eve. My artificial tree stood in the corner of the living room, tall and full, its branches dripping with ornaments that Ray and I had collected over forty years of marriage—little ceramic Santas from craft fairs, seashell angels from Sanibel Island, a glass ornament shaped like a golf cart that Eddie picked out for his dad when he was ten.
